Sealing the door of the refrigerated compartment of a refrigerator or freezer is essential for grating proper and efficient refrigeration. The inlet of hot air in the generated refrigerated compartment and the outlet of cool air from the same impact the efficiency in pre-serving the refrigeration, the energy consumption (excessive activation of the compressor), and may still cause water formation in the inside and outside of the compartment due to condensation or unwanted ice formation.
The most commonly used way to carry out the sealing of the refrigerator door is by means of a magnetic gasket. This gasket generally comprises an attachment portion and a sealing bag housing a magnet. The attachment part is received in a receiving channel disposed in a peripheral inner portion of the refrigerator door, and the magnet is housed in the sealing bag which contacts a metallic flange of the body of the refrigerator in order to assure the proper sealing of the door.
Considering the desired properties for the gasket, a number of different constructions and geometries were proposed for a sealing gasket. Those constructions are known, for example, from documents PI 9913633-3, U.S. Pat. No. 6,227,634, U.S. Pat. No. 6,526,698, US 2004/0244297, US 2006/0188690 and PI 0503971-1.
Document PI 9913633-3 describes a gasket whose attachment portion comprises at least three fixing noses, one of the noses presenting, with the vertical, a more obtuse intermediate angle than the other two fixing noses.
Document U.S. Pat. No. 6,227,634 describes a gasket developed for better resisting to the compression and traction forces acting over it as the door is being moved. The solution provided in this document consists of using two different materials for making part of the sealing bag.
Document U.S. Pat. No. 6,526,698 describes a sealing system for the refrigerator door, wherein the receiving channel of the attachment portion of the gasket has an asymmetric profile, so as to facilitate gasket assembling.
Document US 2004/0244297 describes profiles for the sealing bag of a gasket. According to this document, an additional flap in the bag is predicted which transmits magnetic tension force from the magnet region to the attachment portion region of the gasket.
Document US 2006/0188690 describes a gasket made from a specific material, which would have better extrusion properties.
Finally, document PI 0503971-1 describes a gasket having an attachment portion with a curved profile and a sealing bag subdivided into a side sealing bag, an intermediate sealing bag, a main sealing bag, three secondary sealing bags, and a magnet compartment.
Although the listed documents represent efforts in the sense of achieving a construction of an efficient sealing gasket with long-lasting service life, it remains the search for a solution that allies cost efficiency and manufacturing ease to a gasket having good properties of variation absorption and traction resistance, compression resistance and torsion resistance.